Brief Encounter

Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol is one of those hokey “futuristic” flicks which is really a form of pandering to a very present-day paranoia. It does not exactly require a huge leap of imagination to project a “not-too-distant future” in which gene-typing has become so swift and reliable that state security will have…

An enjoyable and well-made film from British director Mike Leigh which, nevertheless, doesn’t quite satisfy

[See “Entry from August 6, 2008” under “My Diary”] Discover more from James Bowman Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

Fools Rush In by Andy Tennant offers us mildly engaging characters and an even more mildly witty screenplay but cannot escape the clichés of its plot—which, when you boil it down, is nothing more than the old work-family conflict. All this romance—and there is a potential romance here of some charm—only so that yet another…

What, I wonder, is the point of remaking a film you’ve already made if you’re just going to make the same mistakes over again? In fact, in Just Visiting Jean-Marie Gaubert makes the same mistakes he made in Les Visiteurs (1993) only more so—perhaps because he took on John Hughes to help him tart the…

A funny and well-observed chick-flick that, nevertheless, never quite gets us beyond the recognition that it’s hell being a woman.